Bad Timing

by Rebecca Levene

  Finally, he returned to the chamber in which O'Blarney had attacked them. It was a wreck. Bullets had drilled through the glittering rock walls and shattered the banks of equipment. What wasn't shattered had been scorched by the washes of plasma fire from O'Blarney's gun. And, splashed everywhere, tere were red droplets of blood and black flecks of oil.

  Enigma and Joe were nowhere in sight, but the sound of muted groaning led Johnny to them. They hadn't got far, they were in no state to. Enigma must have caught some plasma fire as she dragged her companion away. Her left leg was blackened, the shreds of her trousers fused into her flesh. Joe was in a yet worse state. His eyes were glazed with drugs and pain. His face was mutilated almost beyond recognition. At first Johnny thought it was just the blistering which made it look so odd, then he realised that it was changing, constantly shifting between male and female. The other mutant's body too was growing, twisting, then shrinking again. It was as if he was trying to escape from his great pain by metamorphosing, but there was nothing he could turn into that wasn't in equal agony.

  Still, he smiled when Johnny dropped the O'Blarney's head in front of him. Then he saw the expression on Johnny's face, and his smile faded. "Min Qi Man?" he croaked.

  Johnny shook his head.

  Enigma let out a sob. She turned her face away, as if embarrassed by this show of emotion. Joe staggered to his feet beside her. He looked down at the head in front of him for a moment. The eyes were flat and lifeless, but O'Blarney had died with a smile on his face. His thin-lipped mouth grinned up at Johnny and Joe as if mocking them both. Joe let out a low, animal snarl of rage and kicked O'Blarney's head against the far wall.

  "Can you walk?" Johnny asked him.

  Joe nodded. The motion distorted his face even further. His skin crawled, like an army of cockroaches was fighting a battle beneath it.

  "We'd best get to the surface then," Johnny said. "There's nothing more for us down here."

  He crossed to Enigma and offered her his shoulder. She shrugged him off. "Why? What's the point?"

  "Min Qi Man didn't sacrifice himself for you to give up now," Johnny told her.

  She looked angry for a moment. Then she slung her arm over Johnny's shoulder and they hobbled towards the lift. Johnny paused to scoop up O'Blarney's head on the way.

  As soon as they got to the elevator, Johnny released Enigma's arm and she slumped tiredly to the floor. Woman Man slumped down beside her. He wasn't sure how much longer either of them could last. They certainly wouldn't survive another hyper-velocity trip up. Fortunately, the lift's controls were very simple and after a few seconds Johnny succeeded in setting them on ultra-slow. Even so, when he pressed the switch to get them moving upward, the speed was such that the G-force pushed on his body like an anvil. He resisted it a moment, then shrugged and let himself sink down until he was sitting beside his two companions with his back against the wall. He tipped his head back and allowed his eyes to slip closed.

  He only realised that he'd fallen asleep when he was jerked awake by his own snore. Blearily, he opened his eyes. He couldn't have dozed off for more than a few seconds. The same view was flashing above him, the unending, unchanging white of the lift shaft. Except, he realised an instant later, something had changed. There was something... odd... about the shaft above him. It seemed to be ballooning out, then shrinking in. It was almost - he thought in a dreamlike, half-waking way - as if the lift shaft was a gut, and they were a lump of food being forced along it, being digested.

  A moment later, his eyes shot fully open as he realised what was really going on. Hanging above them was a huge bubble of time distortion, and they were heading straight for it.

  He leapt to his feet and slapped his hand against the big red stop button, but it was far too late. The lift was only just starting to slow as the leading edge of the chronodiation hit it. Johnny experienced it as aphasia, a jumbling of his senses. He could smell the citrus tang of the white rock, underlaid with the rose-petal odour of his Westinghouse variable cartridge blaster. Enigma opened her mouth to speak to him, and a rainbow stream of colours emerged from her mouth. The wire mesh of the lift, he suddenly realised, was composed of hundreds of tiny number threes sewn together with yellow cotton. Disoriented, he held his own hand up. It seemed to be made of string and it smelt of the colour blue.

  Finally, the lift stopped. Right in the middle of the time distortion. Johnny spun his head - on a neck that felt far too loose - to search for his companions. Joe seemed to be melting across the floor. Enigma had rolled herself into a ball of flesh. As Johnny watched, it started to shrink.

  Painfully, he pushed himself to his feet. His legs felt like they were made of jelly. When he looked down, he saw that they were. He reached out his hand towards the start switch. As he did, his fingers started to drift away, floating towards the top of the lift. He glared at them and, after a moment, they snapped back into place. He flicked the switch.

  For a second, nothing happened. Perhaps, he thought vaguely, the lift engine had turned into a porcupine or a cucumber. His legs shook, but when he looked down at them, he saw that they were flesh and blood again, which meant they must be shaking because the lift was moving.

  A few moments later, it had picked up enough speed to clear the far edge of the time distortion. Everything snapped back into place.

  Johnny, heart thumping, ran a quick check of himself: hands, feet, fingers - which he then used to carefully feel the surface of his face and head. Everything seemed normal. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned his attention to the others.

  Unlike Johnny, they hadn't escaped unscathed. Woman Man's face was a mess, a lurid red, leathery mass of lumps and craters. It wasn't shifting any more, but it was so badly scarred it looked neither male nor female. Johnny staggered towards the other mutant. "You okay?" he asked.

  Woman Man nodded, and smiled. The expression looked hideous on his mutilated face. "Best I've felt for a long time," he said. His voice sounded like bricks scraped over sandpaper. But, Johnny realised, he actually did look better. The scars might be disfiguring, but they were healed.

  Woman Man's smile broadened. "You certainly know how to show a girl a good time." Johnny realised, as he helped Jo to her feet, that she was female again.

  Johnny offered a small smile of his own. "Guess we were due some luck." He glanced over at Enigma. She was still curled into a small ball. But he could see her back rising and falling as she breathed, and she wasn't making any noises of distress.

  He frowned. Something wasn't quite right. As the lift finally ground to a halt at the top of the lift shaft, and the first sunlight he'd seen in hours crept in through the bars, he realised what it was. Her hair, which had been turned into a short mop by O'Blarney's plasma gun, was once again flowing black and healthy over her shoulders. Shoulders which, he suddenly realised, were far too small.

  "Enigma?" he said. There was no response, and he noticed that she was crying very quietly. He stooped to touch her shoulder gently. "Enigma!"

  She rolled onto her back and stared up at him out of big, tearful brown eyes.

  She couldn't have been more than eight years old.

  They had locked Ladybird in a store cupboard, left her among the picks, battered hard hats and sticks of dynamite. She couldn't believe it. To come all this way, only to be locked in a cupboard like a naughty child! And meanwhile Johnny was out there, in danger from a traitor he didn't even know about, and she could do nothing.

  Worse, as soon as they realised that the chronite had worn off, they would drag her back to her to the village and her father and she would never see Johnny again, and the rest of her life would be dark and meaningless and empty.

  She leant her forehead against the small barred window of the door and gazed out despairingly into the tunnel outside. The torches which were the only form of lighting this deep in the mine cast dancing shadows on the walls. As her eyes blurred with tears, she could almost imagine that they were the figures of people, giants coming to
rescue her from her cruel family and return her to her one true love.

  She blinked the tears from her eye and they slid, warm and wet, down her cheek. Her vision cleared. The dancing figures became shadows again.

  Except for the one that didn't. It remained, solid and black, moving away from her down the corridor, its hunched shape and hurried walk announcing louder than words that it was up to no good. Its arms were cradled protectively around a large, round object. A glint of light reflected from it as it passed underneath one of the torches.

  There was, Ladybird realised, something very familiar about the figure, about the way it moved, the way its black leather coat flapped around its feet. Only its head seemed wrong, oddly shaped, too small somehow...

  As it disappeared round the corner, she realised where she had seen it before. It was the one-eyed man. The man who had tried to kill her Johnny. Who was probably still trying, if he hadn't already succeeded.

  With an impotent cry of rage, she flung herself against the door. It shook, but didn't budge. She did it again. And again. And again. She heard a crack as something dislocated in her shoulder. And still the door hadn't moved. She knew it was useless. Everything down here was built strong enough to withstand an explosion.

  An explosion.

  Her eyes were drawn to the sticks of dynamite behind her.

  Setting them off in here, when she was only metres away with nothing more to shelter behind than some old crates of mining equipment, would be suicide. The blast would probably do more damage to her than to the door. And even if she did survive, she thought, she'd be in no state to go after Johnny's enemy.

  But even as she was thinking it, she was carefully laying out the sticks of explosives against the door.

  Johnny walked out of the lift, cradling the small form of Enigma in his arms. They emerged into an antechamber, with bare white walls and a small skylight in the ceiling. The quality of the sunlight pouring through it told Johnny that it was now late afternoon. They'd only been down in the mines less than two hours. It felt like an eternity.

  When he heard voices from the door ahead of him, he drew his gun wearily. Beside him, Jo did the same. At the sight of the weapons, Enigma let out a small whimper of fear and buried her face in his chest. He could feel her warm breath through the cloth of his shirt.

  Johnny braced himself, and prepared to die.

  The door sighed open. Johnny found himself face to face with Middenface McNulty and Durham Red. "Sorry we're late," said Middenface. "But we had a wee spot o' bother on the way."

  Red held up the corpse of what looked like a cross between a wild pig and a wolf. "O'Blarney's got strange taste in pets." She licked a drop of blood from her lips.

  "Had a strange taste," Johnny said, holding up O'Blarney's head. He could feel his face splitting into a wide, happy grin. It made his jaw ache, as if it wasn't accustomed to that particular motion. He handed O'Blarney's head back to Woman Man and caught Middenface up in a big bear hug. "I thought you were dead."

  When Johnny released him, Middenface was blushing at this unexpected display of affection. "Aye, weel..." he said. "Reports o' my death've been greatly exaggerated."

  "Much as I hate to break up this touching reunion," Red said, "but Chick Delater's just landed, and if we don't go out and deal with him, reports of his death won't have been exaggerated."

  Johnny nodded, and turned back to Woman Man. "Guess we'd..."

  Then he noticed the other mutant's face. Jo was staring down at the gleaming silver head in her arms with an expression that was gradually transmuting from puzzlement to horror.

  "What is it?" Johnny asked.

  Jo looked up at him. A strange light shone in her eyes, the light of her mutant gift, the gift Middenface had mocked, which let her know exactly what things were. "It's a trigger," she said.

  "A trigger for what?" Red said impatiently.

  Jo dropped the head. It clattered onto the floor - then rolled to a stop at Johnny's feet. "A bomb," she said.

  22 / THE BOMB

  President Hillary smiled down at the head of her lover cradled in her arms. The green light of his eyes shone up at her face. He looked so handsome, she thought, so much more perfect than any human man she'd ever met. "How are you feeling, darling?" she asked him.

  Balthasar's beautiful silver mouth twisted into a wry grin. "Legless."

  Hillary laughed, the sound echoing sharply from the white stone of the corridor. They were nearly there now, at the ship that would take them away from this planet to a new life without fear of discovery. She couldn't believe that it had all worked out according to plan. Well, not precisely - if all had gone as planned, the muties would have been dead long before now - but still...

  She had already arranged for O'Blarney to be granted a full pardon and employed as leader of her guard detail. With him installed on the White Planet, they should have no problem carrying on their affair. Given time, she'd be able to change the law so that their relationship could emerge blinking into the light of day. Admittedly, the Galactic Commission was proving stubborn on the matter, but a few well-placed bribes - or, if necessary, well-targeted assassinations - ought to change their minds. After all, she'd managed to arrange for the time bomb accident on this planet without anyone, apart from a few conspiracy nuts, suspecting a thing.

  The corridor ahead of her broadened, sunlight suddenly splashing in, sparking multi-coloured twinkles in the white rock, and there it was: the ship that was their secret escape route off-planet. It was tiny, just eight metres long, a little shuttle that looked as if it would barely be able to make it out of the atmosphere.

  But as Hillary knew, looks could be deceptive. She pressed the door release on the ship's dull grey hull and a doorway irised open to let her pass. This ship wasn't going anywhere. It was, however, going to a very particular when: three hours in the future when the effects of the bomb would be long past, the planet would be thousands of kilometres away in its orbit, and her waiting deep-space vessel would be able to rendezvous and take them to safety.

  She put Balthasar's head carefully onto the co-pilot's seat, then began to type the time-coordinates into the control panel.

  "Need any help with that, sweetheart?" Balthasar asked her.

  Hillary frowned. "Are you saying I'm not capable?"

  Balthasar swivelled his eyes to look at her. "I'm saying if you get it wrong we could end up in the heart of the sun. And I'm saying that, as a mechanical sentient entity, I'm a bit better at the old arithmetic, know what I mean?"

  Hillary's frown softened, and she picked her lover's head up and held it over the control panel. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap. Does that look okay?"

  Balthasar's eyes scanned the instruments carefully. "Yep," he leered at her. "Nothing wrong with your figures." He kissed her palm as she placed him back down on the seat, then smiled at her, but she only smiled faintly back. "Everything all right, darling? Not having any regrets, are you?"

  She hesitated, feeling a strange discomfort. After a moment she realised that it was her conscience, jabbing her with a pinprick of guilt. So many deaths. But, she reminded herself, the Strontium Dogs were killers themselves. And the people on this planet? Well... it was a pity, but what kind of life did they have here? Besides, she was Galactic President. She was above the petty moral concerns of ordinary people. And everything she was doing, she did for love. How could that be a bad thing?

  "No regrets at all," she said, then leant forward and pressed the button that began the ignition sequence. Thirty seconds later, the time engines would power up and then she'd be in a future in which the explosion had already happened, too late for second thoughts.

  Except that, twenty seconds before that, something ran into the side of the shuttle.

  Anything normal which had done that would have bounced straight off the reinforced synth-steel of its hull. Not this thing, though. This thing was moving so fast that it passed through the hull as if it was no more solid than tissue paper. There was
the hideous screeching noise of metal ripping. A great wind rushed in through the ruptured hull and something, some terrible, terrifying creature, rushed in with it.

  Hillary would have been very surprised to discover that this thing also believed it was acting out of love.

  The creature grabbed Hillary and held her up effortlessly by the lapels of her leather jacket. For a split second, Hillary saw its face. It was the face of a young girl. She looked puzzled. Then, impatiently, the girl tossed Hillary aside, through the ragged hole she had torn in the shuttle's side.

  The jagged metal of the hull ripped a chunk out of her arm as she flew past, and the impact smashed her head against the solid rock of the tunnel. For a moment she thought she was going to pass out. But Balthasar was still inside the shuttle with that, that girl. A native inhabitant of this place, she supposed. And if she was, and had discovered what they were planning to do to her homeworld...

  Determined to rescue Balthasar, Hillary tried to push herself to her feet. She got no further than her knees before collapsing back to the ground, groaning in pain. But she'd be damned if she'd give up. For god's sake - she'd been prepared to commit mass murder for his sake. She could do this. She must. With a supreme effort, she forced her bruised and battered body to its feet.

  She had only staggered one step back towards the shuttle when a figure materialised in front of her. It was indeed a young woman, no older than twenty. She was bringing one hand back from her mouth, as if she had just swallowed something. Hanging from her other hand was Balthasar's head.